Category: Playing Tips

The right knee is perhaps one of the most misunderstood parts in a golf swing. Visit any public course and you’re bound to see golfers of all ages, shapes, and sizes doing everything they can to abuse their golf swings by changing the bend in their back knee.

Today’s Swing Tip is this: your right knee bend stays about the same throughout the swing, right up until your heel comes off the ground towards the end of the follow through. On the backswing, you load up onto a coiled right side. You don’t straighten the knee, nor do you squat. On the downswing, the left knee separates from the right knee a little to start the weight shift forward.

Practice swinging your arms back and through in your living room, focusing on keeping the right knee flexed throughout.

Many of us neglect a little known principle of golf and as a result our swing is compromised. Here’s the rule: Leave enough space between you and the ball so that you can swing through without any blockage or encumbrance. Pretty simple. Make sure that your hands aren’t too close to your body at address so that they aren’t bunched up through the hitting area during your swing. A good way to prevent this is to measure yourself at address to make sure that you have room to move. The pros do it and so should you.

Continue reading “Give Me Some Space”

You’re not David Duval or Annika Sorenstam. Those two can get away with lifting their heads before, during, or just after impact. You? Me? We’ve gotta keep our heads down, because when our head comes up, our whole body comes up. We hit shots thin, we hit shots right, and we hack our way around the course.

Simple solution: get in the habit of feeling your right shoulder on your chin before checking out the ball flight. As your arms swing through the ball, your head will naturally come up because your right shoulder forces it up. Swing normally, but focus on letting your head be pushed up, not lifting it up yourself.

Do this right and you’ll see the club pass through the ball and take the divot. What’s the point in looking up if you’re only going to see a bad shot?

Having trouble with your rhythm? Tried envisioning the swing of Sam Snead and hitting balls barefooted to no avail?

Try taking your top pinkie off the club.

Take your normal grip and stance, but then slide your hands further up the grip until the top pinkie (the left pinkie for a right-handed golfer) comes off the top of the club. Swing away.

Removing the pinkie forces you to slow down your swing a little bit because the club will feel a bit less secure in your hands. You’ll feel it set a little more at the top and you’ll feel a better release through the ball. Hit normal shots with a 7I or so, focusing on maintaining control of the club throughout the swing.

We pinkie swear, this one works.

This tip comes from Robert Speirs:

1. Learn the Basic Fundamentals Grip, stance, and setup will make this game a lot easier to learn. Once you understand the basics, the rest will come quite easily. Don’t worry about swing plane, launch angle, clubhead speed, or anything else. Just worry about getting set up in a good stance, with a proper grip, and accelerate through the ball. The rest will fall into place.
2. Learn to Putt and Chip the Dots Off It The nicest thing about putting is that there are a million ways to do it and nobody can say a darn thing so long as you get the ball in the hole. There are some simple basics – squaring the clubface, accelerating through the ball – but there’s lots of room for style within those rules.

   The nicest thing about putting is that you can do it at just about any time. Challenge players to putting and chipping costs. Keep a roll of quarters in your bag and you’ll be surprised how often you’ll beat golfers that are much better than you, but pick up what you can from them. Chip frequently and vary the kinds of shots – low spinners, high flops, downhill, uphill. Tie the two together into chip-and-putt contests.

Continue reading “Advice for Juniors”

Amateur players tend to flub chips a lot. When they should be getting up and down, instead they’re taking three or even more shots to get down from just off the green. Many amateurs flub their chips because they break down their wrists and attempt to scoop the ball.

Hinging your wrist going back is fine, but through the ball you want firm, solid wrists that don’t have a lot of break in them. To ingrain the feeling, practice hitting your chips with only your left hand on the club. Just stick your right hand in your pocket.

This drill is tough at first, but as you go on you’ll be forced to develop a solid wrist at impact or you’ll see all manner of bad shots. It’s impossible to scoop reliably with only one hand: only a firm wrist through impact will lead to good shots.

You start strong on the first two holes. You par the first, birdie the second and feel like it’s going to be a great outing. After a bogey on three you mutter under your breath at the twosome that is crowding you from behind. And then the jerks behind you start consuming your thoughts. If only those freaks would back off because you’re getting tense. Tense is not why we play golf. We play for fun, for competition, for reasons other than tense.

All of us have experienced something like this on the golf course and under normal circumstances you start to melt under the pressure of having someone climb up your backside on the course. What do you do? How are you going handle it? There’s some things you can do to manage pressure that goes beyond just letting the twosome play through.

Continue reading “Managing Mental Pressure – 3 Keys”

In Tiger Woods’ DVDs, he mentions that his normal 8I travels 158 yards. That may surprise some people who have seen Tiger hit 203-yard 8Is from the rough to 15 feet. The key? Tiger’s normal swing is at 80%.

Many amateurs falsely believe that trying to swing faster results in higher swing speed. This tends not to be true: timing, rhythm, and balance are all thrown off when you crank up the speed. Your wrists unhinge at the wrong time, your hips slide. Havoc ensues.

Play an entire round of golf at 80% effort. Make comfortable, easy passes at the ball. Don’t try to kill it. My guess? You won’t lose any yardage (you may even gain a few yards) and your balls will find their targets a helluva lot more frequently.

Have you had your driver fitted? If you can reasonably repeat your swing, get thee to a pro shop. You deserve a fitted driver.

The mantra these days is “high launch, low spin.” A little bit of that will depend on your ball, cut the clubhead and the shaft (particularly the shaft) matter quite a bit. Use this guide to achieve your optimal distance.

According to Titleist Science Van representatives, the spin numbers are a bit high.

Now, get thee to the pro shop. Get equipment that suits your game. Instant improvement doesn’t come often, so take advantage of it when you can.